The emancipation of the Negroes in the British West Indies : An address delivered at Concord, Massachusetts, on 1st August, 1844

THE

EMANCIPATION OF THE NEGROES

BRITISH WEST INDIES.

AN ADDRESS DELIVERED AT CONCORD, MASSACHUSETTS,
ON 1st AUGUST 1844.

I

)

R. W. EMERSON.

" Fetters, chains, monopolies, thefts, sales, statutes, all engines of tyranny,
men have found insufficient to annihilate freedom, for the good reason, that
they cannot annihilate the Soul, whose first law of being is freedom. Despite
of lies which the ages have told, of tyrannies which the ages have established,
Freedom lives imperishable."

LONDON:

JOHN CHAPMAN, 121. NEWGATE STREET.

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THE

EMANCIPATION OF THE NEGROES

BEITISH WEST INDIES

AX ADDRESS DELITERED AT COXCORD, MASSACHUSETTS,
OX 1st august, 1844

BY

R. W. EMERSOIS".

" Fetters, chains, monopolies, thefts, sales, statutes, all engines of tyranny,
men have found insufficient lo annihilate freedom, for the good reason, that
they cannot annihilate the Soul whose first law of being is freedom. Despite
of lies which the ages have told, of tyrannies which the ages have established.
Freedom lives imperishable."

LONDON :

JOHN CHAPMAN, 121, NEWGATE STREET.

A. at3c?.3r

LONDOK :

I'KlJfTED BY RICHARD KINDER, GREEK ARBOUR COCRT,
OLD BAILEY.

ADDRESS

Friends and Fellow-Citizens,

We are met to exchange congratulations on the anniversary
of an event singular in the history of civilization ; a day of
reason ; of the clear light ; of that which makes us better
than a flock of birds and beasts : a day which gave the im-
mense fortification of a fact, — of gross history, — to ethical
abstractions. It was the settlement, as far as a great empire
was concerned, of a question on which almost every leading
citizen in it had taken care to record his vote ; one which for
many years absorbed the attention of the best and most emi-
nent of mankind. I might well hesitate, coming from other
studies, and without the smallest claim to be a special labourer
in this work of humanity, to undertake to set this matter be-
fore you ; which ought rather to be done by a strict co-opera-
tion of many well-advised persons ; but I shall not apologize
for my weakness. In this cause, no man's weakness is any
prejudice ; it has a thousand sons ; if one man cannot speak,
ten others can ; and whether by the wisdom of its friends, or
by the folly of its adversaries ; by speech and by silence ; by
doing and by omitting to do, it goes forward. Therefore I
will speak, — or, not I, but the might of liberty in my weakness.

4 ON NEGRO EMANCIPATION

The subject is said to have the property of making dull men
eloquent.

It has been in all men's experience a marked effect of the
enterprise in behalf of the African, to generate an overbear-
ing and defying spirit. The institution of slavery seems to its
opponent to have but one side, and he feels that none but a
stupid or a malignant person can hesitate on a view of the
facts. Under such an impulse, I was about to say. If any
cannot speak, or cannot hear the words of freedom, let him
go hence, — I had almost said. Creep into your grave, the uni-
verse has no need of you ! But I have thought better : let
him not go. When we consider what remains to be done for
this interest, in this country, the dictates of humanity make us
tender of sucli as are not yet persuaded. The hardest selfish-
ness is to be borne with. Let us withhold every reproachful,
and, if ^\e can, every indignant remark. In this cause, we
must renounce our temper, and the risings of pride. If there
be any man who thinks the ruin of a race of men a small
matter, compared with the last decoration and completions of
his own comfort, — who would not so much as part with his
ice-cream, to save them from rapine and manacles, I think, I
must not hesitate to satisfy that man, that also his cream and
vanilla are safer and cheaper, by placing the negro nation on
a fair footing, than by robbing them. If the Virginian piques
himself on the picturesque luxury of his vassalage, on the
heavy Ethiopian manners of his house-servants, their silent
obedience, their hue of bronze, their turbaned heads, and
would not exchange them for the more intelligent but preca-
rious hired-service of whites, I shall not refuse to show him,
that when their free-papers are made out, it will still be their
interest to remain on his estate, and that the oldest planters of
Jamaica are convinced, that it is cheaper to pay wages, than to
own the slave.

The history of mankind interests us only as it exhibits a
steady gain of truth and right, in the incessant conflict whicti

IN THE BRITISH WEST INDIES. ^

it records, between the material and the moral nature. From
the earliest monuments, it appears, that one race was victim,
and served the other races. In the oldest temples of Egypt,
negro captives are painted on the tombs of kings, in such at-
titudes as to show that they are on the point of being exe-
cuted; and Herodotus, our oldest historian, relates that the
Troglodytes hunted the Ethiopians in four-horse-chariots.
From the earliest time, the negro has been an article of
luxury to the commercial nations. So has it been, down to
the day that has just dawned on the world. Language must
be raked, the secrets of slaughter-houses and infamous holes
that cannot front the day, must be ransacked, to tell what
negro-slavery has been. These men, our benefactors, as they
are producers of corn and wine, of coffee, of tobacco, of cot-
ton, of sugar, of rum, and brandy, gentle and joyous them-
selves, and producers of comfort and luxury for the civilized
world, — there seated in the finest climates of the globe, child-
ren of the sun, — I am heart-sick when I read how they came
there, and how they are kept there. Their case was left out
of the mind and out of the heart of their brothers. The
prizes of society, the trumpet of fame, the privileges of learn-
ing, of culture, of religion, the decencies and joys of marriage,
honour, obedience, personal authority, and a perpetual melio-
ration into a finer civility, these were for all, but not for them.
For the negro, was the slave-ship to begin with, in whose filthy
hold he sat in irons, unable to lie down ; bad food, and insuf-
ficiency of that ; disfranchisement ; no property in the rags
that covered him ; no marriage, no right in the poor black
woman that cherished him in her bosom, — no right to the
children of his body ; no security from the humours, none
from the crimes, none from the appetites of his master: toil,
famine, insult, and flogging ; and, when he sunk in the fur-
row, no wind of good fame blew over him, no priest of salva-
tion visited him with glad tidings : but he went down to
death, with dusky dreams of African shadow-catchers and

b ON NEGRO EMANCIPATION

Obealis hunting liim. Very sad was the negro tradiiion, that
the Great Spirit, in the beginning, offered the black man,
whom he loved better than the buckra or white, his choice of
two boxes, a big and a little one. The black man was greedy,
and chose the largest. " The buckra box was full up with
pen, paper, and whip, and the negro box with hoe and bill ;
and hoe and bill for negro to this day."

But the crude element of good in human affairs must work
and ripen, spite of whips, and plantation-laws, and West In-
dian interest. Conscience rolled on its pillow, and could not
sleep. We sympathize very tenderly here with the poor
aggrieved planter, of whom so many unpleasant things are
said ; but if we saw the whip applied to old men, to tender
women ; and, undeniably, though 1 shrink to say so, — preg-
nant women set in the treadmill for refusing to work, when,
not they, but the eternal law of animal nature refused to
work ; — if we saw men's backs flayed with cowhides, and
" hot rum poured on, superinduced with brine or pickle,
rubbed in with a cornhusk, in the scorching heat of the sun ;"
— if we saw the runaways hunted with blood-hounds into
swamps and hills, and, in cases of passion, a planter throwing
his negro into a copper of boiling cane-juice, — if we saw
these things with our eyes, we too should wince. They are not
pleasant sights. The bloody is moral : the blood is anti-
slavery : it runs cold in the veins : the stomach rises with dis-
gust, and curses slavery. Well, so it happened ; a good man
or woman, a country boy or girl, it would so fall out, once in
a while saw these injuries, and had the indiscretion to tell of
them. The horrid story ran and flew ; the winds blew it all
over the world. They who heard it, asked their rich and
great friends, if it was true, or only missionary lies. The
richest and greatest, the prime minister of England, the king's
privy-council were obliged to say, that it was too true. It be-
came plain to all men, the more this business was looked into,
that the crimes and cruelties of the slave-traders and slave-

IN THE BRITISH WEST INDIES. 7

owners could not be overstated. The more it was searched,
the more shocking anecdotes came up, — things not to be
spoken. Humane persons who were informed of the reports,
insisted on proving them. Granville Sharpe was accidentally
made acquainted with the sufferings of a slave, whom a West
India planter had brought with him to London, and had
beaten with a pistol on his head so badly, that his whole body
became diseased, and the man useless to his master, who left
him to go whither he pleased. The man applied to Mr. Wm.
Sharpe, a charitable surgeon, who attended the diseases of
the poor. In process of time, he was healed. Granville
Sharpe found him at his brother's, and procured a place for
him in an apothecary's shop. The master accidentally met
his recovered slave, and instantly endeavoured to get posses-
sion of him again. Sharpe protected the slave. In consult-
ing with the lawyers, they told Sharpe the laws were against
him. Sharpe would not believe it. No prescription on earth
could ever render such iniquities legal. " But the decisions
are against you, and Lord Mansfield, now chief justice of
England, leans to the decisions." Sharpe instantly sat down
and gave himself to the study of English law for more than
two years, until he proved that the opinions relied on of Talbot
and Yorke, were incompatible with the former English deci-
sions, and with the whole spirit of English law. He pub-
lished his book in 1769, and he so filled the heads and hearts
of his advocates, that when he brought the case of George
Somerset, another slave, before Lord Mansfield, the slavish
decisions were set aside, and equity affirmed. There is a
sparkle of God's righteousness in Lord Mansfield's judgment,
which does the heart good. Very unwilling had that great
lawyer been to reverse the late decisions ; he suggested twice
from the bench, in the course of the trial, how the question
might be got rid of: but the hint was not taken ; the case
was adjourned again and again, and judgmenl delayed. At
last judgment was demanded, and, on the 22nd June, 1772,

8 ON NEGRO EMANCIPATION

Lord Mansfield is reported to have decided in these
words : —

" Immemorial usage preserves the memory o^ positive law,
long after all traces of the occasion, reason, authority, and time
of its introduction, are lost ; and in a case so odious as the
condition of slaves, must be taken strictly ; (tracing the sub-
ject to natural principles, the claim of slavery never can be
supported.) The power claimed by this return never was in
use here. We cannot say the cause set forth by this return is
allowed or approved of by the laws of this kingdom ; and
therefore the man must be discharged."

This decision established the principle that the " air of
England is too pure for any slave to breathe," but the
wrongs in the islands were not thereby touched. Public at-
tention, however, was drawn that way, and the methods of
the stealing and the transportation from Africa, became
noised abroad. The Quakers got the story. In their plain
meeting-houses, and prim dwellings, this dismal agitation
got entrance. They were rich ; they owned for debt, or by
inheritance, island property; they were religious, tender-
hearted men and women ; and they had to hear the news,
and digest it as they could. Six Quakers met in London on
the 6th July, 1783 ; William Dillwyn, Samuel Hoar, George
Harrison, Thomas Knowles, John Lloyd, Joseph Woods, " to
consider what step they should take for the relief and libe-
ration of the negro slaves in the West Indies, and for the
discouragement of the slave-trade on the coast of Africa."
They made friends and raised money for the slave; they
interested their yearly meeting ; and all English and all
American Quakers. John Woolman of New Jersey, whilst
yet an apprentice, was uneasy in his mind when he was set
to write a bill of sale of a negro, for his master. He gave
his testimony against the traiTic, in Maryland and Virginia.
Thomas Clarkson was a youth at Cambridge, England, when
the subject given out for a Latin prize dissertation, was, " Is

IN THE BRITISH WEST INDIES.

it right to make slaves of others against their will ? " He
wrote an essay, and won the prize ; but he wrote too well
for his own peace ; he began to agk himself, if these things
could be true ; and if they were, he could no longer rest.
He left Cambridge ; he fell in with the six Quakers. They
engaged him to act for them. He himself interested Mr.
Wilberforce in the matter. The shipmasters in that trade
were the greatest miscreants, and guilty of every barbarity to
their own crews. Clarkson went to Bristol, made himself
acquainted with the interior of the slave-ships, and the details
of the trade. The facts confirmed his sentiment, " that Provi-
dence had never made that to be wise, which was immoral,
and that the slave-trade was as impolitic as it was unjust ; "
that it was found peculiarly fatal to those employed in it.
More seamen died in that trade in one year, than in the whole
remaining trade of the country in two. Mr. Pitt and Mr.
Fox were drawn into the generous enterprise. In 1788, the
House of Commons voted Parliamentary inquiry. In 1791, a
bill to abolish the trade was brought in by Wilberforce, and
supported by him, and by Fox, and Burke, and Pitt, with the
utmost ability and faithfulness ; resisted by the planters, and
the whole West Indian interest, and lost. During the next
sixteen years, ten times, year after year, the attempt was
renewed by Mr. Wilberforce, and ten times defeated by the
planters. The king, and all the royal family but one, were
against it. These debates are instructive, as they show on
what grounds the trade was assailed and defended. Every
thing generous, wise, and sprightly is sure to come to the
attack. On the other part, are found cold prudence, bare-^
faced selfishness, and silent votes. But the nation was
aroused to enthusiasm. Every horrid fact became known.
In 1791, three hundred thousand persons in Britain pledged
themselves to abstain from all articles of island produce. The
planters were obliged to give way ; and in 1807, on the 25th
March, the bill passed, and liie slave-trade was abolished.

10 ON NEGRO EMANCIPATION

The assailants of slavery had early agreed to limit their
political action on this subject to the abolition of the trade,
but Granville Sharpe, as a matter of conscience, whilst he
acted as chairman of the London Committee, felt constrained
to record his protest against the limitation, declaring that sla-
very was as much a crime against the Divine law, as the slave-
trade. The trade, under false flags, went on as before. In
1821, according to official documents presented to the Ame-
rican government by the Colonization Society, 200,000 slaves
were deported from Africa. Nearly 50,000 were landed in
the port of Havana alone. In consequence of the dangers of
the trade growing out of the act of abolition, ships were built
sharp for swiftness, and with a frightful disregard of the com-
fort of the victims they were destined to transport. They
carried five, six, even seven hundred stowed in a ship built so
narrow as to be unsafe, being made just broad enough on the
beam to keep the sea. In attempting to make its escape from
the pursuit of a man-of-war, one ship flung five hundred slaves
alive into the sea. These facts went into Parliament. In the
islands, was an ominous state of cruel and licentious society ;
every house had a dungeon attached to it ; every slave was
worked by the whip. There is no end to the tragic anecdotes
in the municipal records of the colonies. The boy was set
to strip and to flog his own mother to blood, for a small
offence. Looking in the face of his master by the negro was
held to be violence by the island courts. He was worked
sixteen hours, and his ration by law, in some islands, was a
pint of flour and one salt herring a day. He suffered insult,
stripes, mutilation, at the humour of the master : iron collars
were riveted on their necks with iron prongs ten inches long ;
capsicum pepper was rubbed in the eyes of the females ; and
they were done to death with the
the master and manager, without
at last, some Quakers, Moravians, and Wesleyan and Baptist
missionaries, following in the steps of Carey and Ward in the

most shocking levity between
fine or inquiry. And when,

IN THE BRITISH WEST INDIES. H

East Indies, had been moved to come and cheer the poor
victim with the hope of some reparation, in a future world, of
the wrongs he suffered in this, these missionaries were perse-
cuted by the planters, their lives threatened, their chapels
burned, and the negroes furiously forbidden to go near them.
These outrages rekindled the flame of British indignation.
Petitions poured into Parliament : a million persons signed
their names to these; and in 1853, on the 14lh May, Lord
Stanley, minister of the colonies, introduced into the House of
Commons his bill for the Emancipation.

The scheme of the minister, with such modification as it
received in the legislature, proposed gradual emancipation ;
that on 4 St August, 1834, all persons now slaves should be
entitled to be registered as apprenticed labourers, and to
acquire thereby all the rights and privileges of freemen,
subject to the restriction of labouring under certain conditions.
These conditions were, that the praidials should owe three-
fourths of the profits of their labour to their masters for six
years, and the nonprsedials for four years. The other fourth of
the apprentice's time was to be his own, which he might sell
to his master, or to other persons ; and at the end of the term
of years fixed, he should be free.

With these provisions and conditions, the bill proceeds, in
the twelfth section in the following terms. " Be it enacted,
that all and every person who, on Jst August, 1834, shall be
holden in slavery within any such British colony as aforesaid,
shall upon, and from and after the said first of August,
become and be to all intents and purposes free, and dis-
charged of and from all manner of slavery, and shall be
absolutely and for ever manumitted ; and that the children
thereafter born to any such persons, and the offspring of such
children, shall, in like manner, be free from their birth ; and
that, from and after the 1st August, 1834, slavery shall be and
is hereby utterly and for ever abolished and declared unlawful

42 ON NEGRO EMANCIPATION

throughout the British colonies, plantations, and possessions
abroad."

The ministers, having estimated the slave products of the
colonies in annual exports of sugar, rum, and coffee, at
361,500,000 per annum, estimated the total value of the
slave property at 5650,000,000 sterling, and proposed
to give the planters, as a compensation for so much of the
slaves' time as the act took from them, 3620,000,000
sterling, to be divided into nineteen shares for the nineteen
colonies, and to be distributed to the owners of slaves by
commissioners, whose appointment and duties were regulated
by the Act. After much debate, the bill passed by large
majorities. The apprenticeship system is understood to have
proceeded from Lord Brougham, and was by him urged on
his colleagues, who, it is said, were inclined to the policy of
immediate emancipation.

The colonial legislatures received the act of Parliament with
various degrees of displeasure, and, of course, every provision
of the bill was criticised with severity. The new relation
between the master and the apprentice, it was feared, would
be mischievous ; for the bill required the appointment of
magistrates who should hear every complaint of the apprentice,
and see that justice was done him. It was feared that the
interest of the master and servant would now produce perpe-
tual discord between them. In the island of Antigua, con-
taining 57,000 people, 50,000 being negroes, these objections
had such weight, that the legislature rejected the apprentice-
ship system, and adopted absolute emancipation. In the other
islands the system of the ministry was accepted.

The reception of it by the negro population was equal in
nobleness to the deed. The negroes were called together by
the missionaries and by the planters, and the news explained
to them. On the night of the 5 1st July they met everywhere
at their churches and chapels, and at midnight, when the

IN THE BRITISH WEST INDIES. 15

clock Struck twelve, on their knees, the silent, weeping assem-
bly became men ; they rose and embraced each other ; they
cried, they sung, they prayed, they were wild with joy, but
there was no riot, no feasting. 1 have never read anything in
history more touching than the moderation of the negroes.
Some American captains left the shore and put to sea, antici-
pating insurrection and general murder. But with far dif-
ferent thoughts, the negroes spent the hour in their huts and
chapels. I will not repeat to you the well-known paragraph,
in which Messrs. Thome and Kimball, the commissioners scut
out in the year 1837, by the American Anti-Slavery Society,
describe the occurrences of that night in the island of Antigua.
It has been quoted in every newspaper, and Dr. Channing has
given it additional fame. But I must be indulged in quoting
a few sentences from the pages that follow it, narrating the
behaviour of the emancipated people on the next day.

* " The first of August came on Friday, and a release was
proclaimed from all work until the next Monday. The day
was chiefly spent by the great mass of the negroes in the
churches and chapels. The clergy and missionaries through-
out the island were actively engaged, seizing the opportunity
to enlighten the people on all the duties and responsibilities of
their new relation, and urging them to the attainment of that
higher liberty with which Christ maketh his children free.
In every quarter, we were assured, the day was like a Sab-
bath. Work had ceased. The hum of business was still :
tranquillity pervaded the towns and country. The planters
informed us, that they went to the chapels where their own
people were assembled, greeted them, shook hands with them,
and exchanged the most hearty good wishes. At Grace Hill,
there were at least a thousand persons around the Moravian
Chapel who could not get in. For once the house of God

* " Emancipation in the West Indies : a Six Months Tour in Antigua,
Barbadoes, and Jamaica, in the year 1837. By J. A. Thome and J. II. Kim-
ball. New York, 1833."— pp. 146, 147.

B

i4 ON NEGRO EMANCIPATION

suffered violence, aud the violent took it by force. At Grace
Bay the people, all dressed in white, formed a procession,
and walked arm in arm into the chapel. We were told
that the dress of the negroes on that occasion was un-
commonly simple and modest. There was not the least dis-
position to gaiety. Throughout the island, there was not a
single dance known of, either day or night, nor so much as a
fiddle played."

On the next Monday morning, with very few exceptions,
every negro on every plantation was in the field at his work.
In some places, they waited to see their master, to know what
bargain he would make ; but, for the most part, through-
out the islands, nothing painful occurred. In June, 4835,
the ministers. Lord Aberdeen and Sir George Grey, declared
to the Parliament, that the system worked well ; that now for
ten months, from 1st of August, 4854, no injury or violence
had been offered to any white, and only one black had been
hurt in 800,000 negroes : and, contrary to many sinister pre-
dictions, that the new crop of island produce would not fall
short of that of the last year.

But the habit of oppression was not destroyed by a law
and a day of jubilee. It soon appeared in all the islands,
that the planters were disposed to use their old privileges, and
overwork the apprentices ; to take from them, under various
pretences, their fourth part of their time ; and to exert the
same licentious despotism as before. The negroes complained
to the magistrates, and to the governor. In the island of
Jamaica, this ill blood continually grew worse. The governors.
Lord Belmore, the Earl of Sligo, and afterwards Sir Lionel
Smith, (a governor of their own class, who had been sent out
to gratify the planters,) threw themselves on the side of the
oppressed, and are at constant quarrel with the angry and
bilious island legislature. Nothing can^exceed the ill-humour
and sulkiness of the addresses of this assembly.

I may here express a general remark, which the history of

IN THE BRITISH WEST INDIES. lo

slavery seems to justify, that it is not founded solely on the
avarice of the planter. We sometimes say, the planter does
not want slaves, he only wants the immunities and the luxuries
which the slaves yield him ; give him money, give him a ma-
chine that will yield him as much money as the slaves, and he
will thankfully let them go. He has no love of slavery, he
wants luxury, and he will pay even this price of crime and
danger for it. But I think experience does not warrant this
favourable distinction, but shows the existence, besides the
covetousness, of a bitterer element, the love of power, the
voluptuousness of holding a human being in his absolute con-
trol. We sometimes observe, that spoiled children contract a
habit of annoying quite wantonly those who have charge of
them, and seem to measure their own sense of well-being, not
by what they do, but by the degree of reaction they can cause.
It is vain to get rid of them by not mhiding them : if purring
and humming is not noticed, they squeal and screech ; then if
you chide and console them, they find the experiment suc-
ceeds, and they begin again. The child will sit in your arms
contented, provided you do nothing. If you take a book and
read, he commences hostile operations. The planter is the
spoiled child of his unnatural habits, and has contracted in his
indolent and luxurious climate the need of excitement by irri-
tating and tormenting his slave.

Sir Lionel Smith defended the poor negro girls — the prey
of the planter's licentiousness ; they shall not be whipped with
tamarind rods, if they do not comply with their master's will :
he defended the negro women ; they should not be made to dig
the cane-holes, (which is the very hardest of the field-work ;)
he defended the Baptist preachers and the stipendiary magis-
trates, who are the negroes' friends, from the power of the
planter. The power of the planters, however, to oppress, was
greater than the power of the apprentice and of his guardians
to withstand. Lord Brougham and Mr. Buxton declared that
the planter had not fulfilled his part in the contract, whilst

46 ON NEGRO EMANCIPATION

the apprentices liad fulfilled theirs ; and demanded that the
emancipation should be hastened, and the apprenticeship
abolished. Parliament was compelled to pass additional laws
for the defence and security of the negro, and in ill-humour
at these acts, the great island of Jamaica, with a population of
half a million, and 500,000 negroes, early in 1838, resolve to
throw up the two remaining years of apprenticeship, and to
emancipate absolutely on the 1st August, 1838, In British
Guiana, in Dominica, the same resolution had been earlier
taken with more good-will ; and the other islands fell into the
measure; so that on the 1st August, 4838, the shackles
dropped from every British slave. The accounts which we
have from all parties, both from the planters, and those too,
who were originally most opposed to the measure, and from
the new freemen, are of the most satisfactory kind. The
manner in which the new festival was celebrated, brings
tears to the eyes. The 1st of August, 1838, was observed
in Jamaica as a day of thanksgiving and prayer. Sir Lionel
Smith, the governor, writes to the British Ministry, " It is
impossible for me to do justice to the good order, decorum,
and gratitude, which the whole labouring population mani-
fested on that happy occasion. Though joy beamed on every
countenance, it was throughout tempered with solemn thank-
fulness to God, and the churches and chapels were every-
where filled with these happy people in humble offering of
praise."

The Queen, in her speech to the Lords ajid Commons,
praised the conduct of the emancipated population : and, in
4 840, Sir Charles Metcalfe, the new governor of Jamaica, in
his address to the Assembly, expressed himself to that late
exasperated body in these terms : — " All those who are ac-
quainted with the state of the island, know that our emanci-
pated population are as free, as independent in their conduct,
as well-conditioned, as much in the enjoyment of abundance,
and as strongly sensible of the blessings of liberty, as any

IN THE BRITISH WEST INDIES.

47

ihet we know of in any country. All disqualifications and
distinctions of colour have ceased ; men of all colours have
equal rights in law, and an equal footing in society, and every
man's position is settled by the same circumstances which re-
gulate that point in other free countries, where no difference
of colour exists. It may be asserted, without fear of denial,
that the former slaves of Jamaica are now as secure, in all
social rights, as freeborn Britons." He further describes the
erection of numerous churches, chapels, and schools, which
the new population required, and adds that more are still de-
manded. The Legislature, in their reply, echo the governor's
statement, and say, " The peaceful demeanour of the emanci-
pated population redounds to their own credit, and affords a
proof of their continued comfort and prosperity."

I said, this event is signal in the history of civilization.
There are many styles of civilization, and not one only. Ours
is full of barbarities. There are many faculties in man, each
of which takes its turn of activity, and that faculty which is
paramount in any period, and exerts itself through the strongest
nation, determines the civility of that age ; and each age
thinks its own the perfection of reason. Our culture is very
cheap and intelligible. Unroof any house, and you shall find
it. The well-being consists in having a sufficiency of coffee
and toast, with a daily newspaper ; a well-glazed parlour, with
marbles, mirrors and centre-table ; and the excitement of a
few parties and a few rides in a year. Such as one house
is, such are all. The owner of a New York manor imitates
the mansion and equipage of the London nobleman ; the
Boston merchant rivals his brother of New York ; and the
villages copy Boston. There have been natioi.^ elevated Ijy
great sentiments. Such was the civilization of Sparta and the
Dorian race, whilst it was defective in some of the chief
elements of ours. That of Athens, again, lay in an intellect
dedicated to beauty. That of Asia Minor in poetry, music,
and arts ; that of Palestine in piety ; tliat of Rome in military

B 3

18 ON NEGRO EMANCIPATION

arts and virtues, exalted by a prodigious magnanimity ; that of
China and Japan in the last exaggeration of decorum and
etiquette. Our civilization, England determines the style of,
inasmuch as England is the strongest of the family of existing
nations, and as we are the expansion of that people. It is
that of a trading nation ; it is a shopkeeping civilization. The
English lord is a retired shopkeeper, and has the prejudices
and timidities of that profession. And v^e are shopkeepers,
and have acquired the vices and virtues that belong to trade.
We peddle, we truck, we sail, we row, we ride in cars, we
creep in teams, we go in canals — to market, and for the sale
of goods. The national aim and employment streams into our
ways of thinking, our laws, our habits, and our manners.
Tlie customer is the immediate jewel of our souls. Him we
flatter, him we feast, compliment, vote for, and will not con-
tradict. It was or it seemed the dictate of trade, to keep the
negro down. We had found a race who were less warlike,
and less energetic shopkeepers than we ; who had very little
skill in trade. We found it very convenient to keep them at
work, since, by the aid of a little whipping, we could get their
w^ork for nothing but their board and the cost of whips-
Wlial if it cost a few unpleasant scenes on the coast of Africa ?
That was a great way off; and the scenes could be endured
by some sturdy, unscrupulous fellows, who could go for high
wages, and bring us the men, and need not trouble our ears
with the disagreeable particulars. If any mention was made
of homicide, madness, adultery, and intolerable tortures, we
would let the church-bells ring louder, the cliurch-organ
swell its peal, and drown the hideous sound. The sugar they
raised was excellent ; nobody tasted blood in it. The coffee
was fragrant ; the tobacco was incense ; the brandy made
nations happy ; the cotton clothed the world. What ! all
raised by these men, and no wages ? Excellent ! what a
convenience ! They seemed created by Providence to bear
the heat and the whipping, and make these fine articles.

IN THE BRITISH WEST INDIES.

19

But unhappily, most unhappily, gentlemen, man is born
with intellect, as well as with a love of sugar, and with a
sense of justice, as well as a taste for strong drink. These
ripened, as well as those. You could not educate him, you
could not get any poetry, any wisdom, any beauty in woman,
any strong and commanding character in man, but these
absurdities would still come flashing out — these absurdities
of a demand for justice, a generosity for the weak and
oppressed. Unhappily, too, for the planter, the laws of
nature are in harmony with each other : that which the head
and the heart demand, is found to be, in the long run, for
what the grossest calculator calls his advantage. The moral
sense is always supported by the permanent interest of the
parties. Else, I know not how, in our world, any good would
ever get done. It was shown to the planters that they, as well
as the negroes, were slaves ; that, though they paid no wages,
they got very poor work ; that their estates were ruining them,
under the finest climate ; and that they needed the severest
monopoly laws at home to keep them from bankruptcy. The
oppression of the slave recoiled on them. They were full of
vices ; their children were lumps of pride, sloth, sensuality,
and rottenness. The position of woman was nearly as bad as
it could be, t>nd, like other robbers, they could not sleep in
security. Many planters have said, since the emancipation,
that, before that day, they were the greatest slaves on their
estates. Slavery is no scholar, no improver ; it does not love
the whistle of the railroad ; it does not love the newspaper,
the mail-bag, a college, a book, or a preacher, who has the
absurd whim of saying what he thinks ; it does not increase
the white population ; it does not improve the soil ; everything
goes to decay. For these reasons, the islands proved bad cus-
tomers to England. It was very easy for manufacturers less
shrewd than those of Birmingham and Manchester to see, that
if the slaves had wages, the slaves would be clothed, would
build houses, would fill them with tools, with pottery, with

20 ON NEGRO EMANCIPATION

crockery, with hardware ; and negro women love fine clothes
as well as w^hite women. In every naked negro of those
thousands, they saw a future customer. Meantime, they saw
further, that the slave-trade, by keeping in barbarism the whole
coast of eastern Africa, deprives them of countries and nations
of customers, if once freedom and civility, and European man-
ners could get a foothold there. But the trade could not be
abolished, whilsl this hungry West Indian market, with an
appetite like the grave, cried, " More, more ; bring me a hun-
dred a day ; " they could not expect any mitigation in the
madness of the poor African war-chiefs. These considerations
opened the eyes of the dullest in Britain. More than this, the
West Indian estate was owned or mortgaged in England, and
the owner and the mortgagee had very plain intimations that
the feeling of English liberty was gaining every hour new mass
and velocity, and the hostility to such as resisted it, would be
fatal. The House of Commons would destroy the protection
of island produce, and interfere on English politics in the island
legislation ; so they hastened to make the best of their position,
and accepted the bill.

These considerations, I doubt not, had their weight, the
interest of trade, the interest of the revenue, and, moreover,
the good fame of the action. It was inevitable that men
should feel these motives. But they do not appear to have
had an excessive or unreasonable weight. On reviewing this
history, I think the whole transaction reflects infinite honour
on the people and Parliament of England. It was a stately
spectacle, to see the cause of human rights argued with so
much patience and generosity, and with such a mass of evi-
dence before that powerful people. It is a creditable incident
in the history, that when, in 4789, the first privy-council
report of evidence on the trade, a bulky folio, (embodying all
the facts which the London Committee had been engaged for
years in collecting, and all the examinations before the council,)
was presented to the House of Commons, a late day being

IN THE BRITISH WEST INDIES. 21

named for the discussion, in order to give members time, —
Mr. Wilberforce, Mr. Pitt, the prime minister, and other gen-
tlemen, took advantage of the postponement, to retire into the
country, to read the report. For months and years the bill
was debated, with some consciousness of the extent of its rela-
tions by the first citizens of England, the foremost men of the
earth ; every argument was weighed, every particle of evidence
sifted, and laid in the scale ; and, at last, the right triumphed,
the poor man was vindicated, and the oppressor was flung out.
I know that England has the advantage of trying the question
at a wide distance from the spot where the nuisance exists ;
the planters are not, excepting in rare examples, members of the
legislature. The extent of the empire, and ihe magnitude and
number of other questions crowding into court, keep this one
in balance, and prevent it from obtaining that ascendency, and
being urged with that intemperance, which a question of pro-
perly tends to acquire. There are causes in the composition
of the British legislature, and the relation of its leaders to the
country and to Europe, which exclude much that is pitiful and
injurious in other legislative assemblies. From these reasons,
the question was discussed with a rare independence and
magnanimity. It was not narrowed down to a paltry elec-
tioneering trap, and, I must say, a delight in justice, an honest
tenderness for the poor negro, for man suffering these wrongs,
combined with the national pride, which refused to give the
support of English soil, or the protection of the English flag,
to these disgusting violations of nature.

Forgive me, fellow-citizens, if I own to you, that in the last
few days that my attention has been occupied with this his-
tory, I have not been able to read a page of it, without the
most painful comparisons. Whilst I have read of England, I
have thought of New England. Whilst I have meditated in
my solitary walks on the magnanimity of the English Bench
and Senate, reaching out the benefit of the law to the most
helpless citizen in her world-wide realm, I have found myself

22 ON NEGRO EMANCIPATION

oppressed by other thoughts. A.s I have walked in the pas-
tures and along the edge of woods, I could not keep my ima-
gination on those agreeable figures, for other images that in-
truded on me. I could not see the great vision of the pa-
triots and senators who have adopted the slave's cause : — they
turned their backs on me. No : I see other pictures — of
mean men : 1 see very poor, very ill-clothed, very ignorant
men, not surrounded by happy friends, — to be plain, — poor
black men of obscure employment as mariners, cooks, or
stewards, in ships, yet citizens of this our Commonwealth of
Massachusetts, — freeborn as we, — whom the slave-laws of the
States of South Carolina, Georgia, and Louisiana, have ar-
rested in the vessels in which they visited those ports, and
shut up in jails so long as the vessel remained in port, with
the stringent addition, that if the shipmaster fails to pay the
costs of this official arrest, and the board in jail, these citizens
are to be sold for slaves, to pay that expense. This man,
these men, I see, and no law to save them. Fellow-citizens,
this crime will not be hushed up any longer. I have learned
that a citizen of Nantucket, walking in New Orleans, found a
freeborn citizen of Nantucket — a man, too, of great personal
worth, and, as it happened, very dear to him, as having saved
his own life, working chained in the streets of that city, kid-
napped by such a process as this. In the sleep of the laws,
the private interference of two excellent citizens of Boston has,
I have ascertained, rescued several natives of this State from
these southern prisons. Gentlemen, I thought the deck of a
Massachusetts ship was as much the territory of Massachusetts,
as the floor on which we stand. It should be as sacred as the
temple of God. The poorest fishing-smack, that floats under
the shadow of an iceberg in the northern seas, or hunts the
whale in the southern ocean, should be encompassed by her
laws with comfort and protection, as much as within the arms
of Cape Ann and Cape Cod. And this kidnapping is suffered
within our own land and federalion, whilst the fourth article

IN THE BRITISH WEST INDIES. 25

of the Constitution of the United States ordains in terms, that
" The citizens of each Stale shall be entitled to all privileges
and immunities of citizens in the several Stales." If such a
damnable outrage can be committed on the person of a citizen
with impunity, let the Governor break the broad seal of the
State ; he wears the sword in vain. The Governor of Massa-
chusetts is a trifler : the State-house in Boston is a play-house :
the General Court is a dishonoured body : if they make laws
which they cannot execute. The great-hearted Puritans have
left no posterity. The rich men may walk in State-street, but
they walk without honour ; and the farmers may brag their
democracy in the country, but they are disgraced men. If
the State has no power to defend its own people in its own
shipping, because it has delegated that power to the Federal
Government, has it no representation in the Federal Govern-
ment ? Are those men dumb ? I am no lawyer, and cannot
indicate the forms applicable to the case, but here is some-
thing which transcends all forms. Let the senators and re-
presentatives of the Slate, containing a population of a million
freemen, go in a body before the Congress, and say, that they
have a demand to make on them so imperative, that all func-
tions of government must slop, until it is satisfied. If ordi-
nary legislation cannot reach it, then extraordinary must be
applied. The Congress should instruct the President to send
to those ports of Charlestown, Savannah, and New Orleans,
such orders and such force, as shall release, forthwith, all
such citizens of Massachusetts as were holden in prison with-
out the allegation of any crime, and should set on foot the
strictest inquisition to discover where such persons, brought
into slavery by these local laws, at any time heretofore, may
now be. That first ; — and then, let order be taken to indem-
nify all such as have been incarcerated. As for dangers to
the Union, from such demands ! — the Union is already at an
end, when the first citizen of Massachusells is thus outraged.
Is it an union and covenant in which the Slate of Massa-

24 ON NEGRO EMANCIPATION

chusetts agrees to be imprisoned, and the State of Carolina to
imprison ? Gentlemen, 1 am loath to say harsh things, and
perhaps I know too little of politics for the smallest weight to
attach to any censure of mine, — but I am at a loss how to
characterise the tameness and silence of the two senators and
the ten representatives of the State at Washington. To what
purpose have we clothed each of those representatives with
the power of seventy thousand persons, and each senator with
nearly half a million, if they are to sit dumb at their desks,
and see their constituents captured and sold ; — perhaps to
gentlemen sitting by them in the hall. There is a scandalous
rumour that has been swelling louder of late years, — perhaps
it is wholly false, — that members are bullied into silence by
southern gentlemen. It is so easy to omit to speak, or even
to be absent when delicate things are to be handled. I may
as well say what all men feel, that whilst our very amiable
and very innocent representatives and senators at Washington,
are accomplished lawyers and merchants, and very eloquent at
dinners and i^t caucuses, there is a disastrous want of men
from New England. I would gladly make exceptions, and
you will not suffer me to forget one eloquent old man, in
whose veins the blood of Massachusetts rolls, and who singly
has defended the freedom of speech, and the rights of the
free, against the usurpation of the slave-holder. But the
reader of Congressional debates in New England, is perplexed
to see with what admirable sweetness and patience the ma-
jority of the free states are schooled and ridden by the mi-
nority of slave-holders. What if we should send thither
representatives who were a particle less amiable and less inno-
cent ? I entreat you, sirs, let not this stain attach, let not
this misery accumulate any longer. If the managers of our
political parties are too prudent and too cold ; — if, most un-
happily, the ambitious class of young men and political men
have found out, that these neglected victims are poor and
without weight ; that they have no graceful hospitalities to

IN THE BRITISH ^VEST INDIES. 25

offer ; no valuable business to throw into any man's hands, no
strong vote to cast at the elections ; and therefore may with
impunity be left in their chains, or to the chance of chains,
then let the citizens in their primary capacity take up iheir
cause on this very ground, and say to the government of the
State, and of the Union, that government exists to defend the
weak and the poor and the injured party ; the rich and the
strong can belter take care of themselves. And as an omen
and assurance of success, I point you to the bright example
which England set you, on this day, ten years ago.

There are other comparisons and other imperative duties
which come sadly to mind, — but I do not wish to darken the
hours of this day by crimination ; I turn gladly to the rightful
theme, to the bright aspects of the occasion.

This event was a moral revolution. The history of it is
before you. Here was no prodigy, no fabulous hero, no Tro-
jan horse, no bloody war, but all was achieved by plain means
of plain men, working not under a leader, but under a senti-
ment. Other revolutions have been the insurrection of the
oppressed ; this was the repentance of the tyrant. It was the
masters revolting from their mastery. The slave-holder said,
I will not hold slaves. The end was noble, and the means
were pure. Hence, the elevation and pathos of this chapter
of history. The lives of the advocates are pages of greatness,
and the connection of the eminent senators with this question,
constitutes the immortalizing moments of those men's lives.
The bare enunciation of the thesis, at which the lawyers and
legislators arrived, gives a glow to the heart of the reader.
Lord Chancellor Norlhington is the author of the famous sen-
tence, " As soon as any man puts his foot on English ground,
he becomes free." " I was a slave," said the counsel of So-
merset, speaking for his client, " for I was in America : I am
now in a country, where the common rights of mankind are
known and regarded." Granville Sharpe filled the ear of the
judges with the sound principles, that had from time to time

c

26

ON NEGRO EMANCIPATION

been affirmed by the legal authorities. " Derived power can-
not be superior to the power from which it is derived." " The
reasonableness of the law is the soul of the law." " It is
better to suffer every evil, than to consent to any." Out it
would come, the God's truth, out it came, like a bolt from a
cloud, for all the mumbling of the lawyers. One feels very
sensibly in all this history that a great heart and soul are be-
hind there, superior to any man, and making use of each
in turn, and infinitely attractive to every person according to
the degree of reason in his own mind, so that this cause has
had the power to draw to it every particle of talent and of
worth in England, from the beginning. All the great geniuses
of the British senate — Fox, Pitt, Burke, Grenville, Sheridan,
Grey, Canning, ranged themselves on its side ; the poet Cow-
per wrote for it : Franklin, Jefferson, Washington, in this
country, all recorded their votes. All men remember the
subtlety and the fire of indignation, which the Edinburgh
Review contributed to the cause ; and every liberal mind,
poet, preacher, moralist, statesman, has had the fortune to
appear somewhere for this cause. On the other part, ap-
peared the reign of pounds and shillings, and all manner of
rage and stupidity ; a resistance which drew from Mr. Hud-
dlestone in Parliament the observation, " That a curse at-
tended this trade even in the mode of defending it." By a
certain fatality, none but the vilest arguments were brought
forward, which corrupted the very persons who used them.
Every one of these was built on the narrow ground of in-
terest, of pecuniary profit, of sordid gain, in opposition to
every motive that had reference to humanity, justice, and re-
ligion, or to that great principle which comprehended them
all." — This moral force perpetually reinforces and dignifies
the friends of the cause. It gave that tenacity to their point
which has ensured ultimate triumph ; and it gave that supe-
riority in reason, in imagery, in eloquence, which makes in
all countries anti-slavery meetings so attractive to the people,

I> THE BRITISH WEST INDIES. 27

and has made it a proverb in Massachusetts, that " eloquence
is dog-cheap at the anti-slavery chapel !"

I will say further, that we are indebted mainly to this
movement, and to the continuers of it for the popular discus-
sion of every point of practical ethics, and a reference of
every question to the absolute standard. It is notorious, that
the political, religious, and social schemes, with which the
minds of men are now most occupied, have been matured, or
at least broached, in the free and daring discussions of these
assemblies. Men have become aware through the emancipa-
tion, and kindred events, of the presence of powers, which,
in their days of darkness, they had overlooked. Virtuous
men will not again rely on political agents. They have found
out the deleterious effect of political association. Up to this
day, we have allowed to statesmen a paramount social stand-
ing, and we bow low to them as to the great. We cannot
extend this deference to them any longer. The secret cannot
be kept, that the seats of power are filled by underlings,
ignorant, timid, and selfish, to destroy all claim, excepting
that on compassion, to the society of the just and generous.
What happened notoriously to an American ambassador in
England, that he found himself compelled to palter, and to
disguise the fact that he was a slave-breeder, happens to men
of state. Their vocation is a presumption against them,
among well-meaning people. The superstition respecting
power and office, is going to the ground. The stream of
human affairs flows its own way, and is very little affected by
the activity of legislators. What great masses of men wish
done, will be done ; and they do not wish it for a freak, but
because it is their state and natural end. There are now
other energies than force, other than political, which no man
in future can allow himself to disregard. There is direct
conversation and influence. A man is to make himself felt,
by his proper force. The tendency of things runs steadily to
this point, namely, to put every man on his merits, and to

28 ON NEGRO EMANCIPATION

give him so much power as he naturally exerts — no more, no
less. Of course, the timid and base persons, all who are
conscious of no worth in themselves, and who owe all their
place to the opportunities which the old order of things
allowed them to deceive and defraud men, shudder at the
change, and would fain silence every honest voice, and lock
up every house where liberty and innovation can be pleaded
for. They would raise mobs, for fear is very cruel. But the
strong and healthy yeomen and husbands of the land, the self-
sustaining class of inventive and industrious men, fear no com-
petition or superiority. Come what will, their faculty cannot
be spared.

The First of August marks the entrance of a new element
into modern politics, namely, the civilization of the negro. A
man is added to the human family. Not the least affecting
part of this history of abolition, is, the annihilation of the old
indecent nonsense about the nature of the negro. In the
case of the ship "Zong," in 1781, whose master had thrown
one hundred and thirty-two slaves alive into the sea, to cheat
the underwriters, the first jury gave a verdict in favour of the
master and owners : they had a right to do what they had
done. Lord Mansfield is reported to have said on the bench,
" The matter left to the jury is, — Was it from necessity ? For
they had no doubt, — though it shocks one very much, — that
the case of slaves was the same as if horses had been thrown
overboard. It is a very shocking case." But a more en-
lightened and humane opinion began to prevail. Mr. Clark-
son, early in his career, made a collection of African produc-
tions and manufactures, as specimens of the arts and culture
of the negro ; comprising cloths and loom, weapons, polished
stones and woods, leather, glass, dyes, ornaments, soap, pipe-
bowls, and trinkets. These he showed to Mr. Pitt, who saw
and handled them with extreme interest. " On sight of
these," says Clarkson, " many sublime thoughts seemed to
rush at once into his mind, some of which he expressed ;"

IN THE BRITISH WEST INDIES. 29

and hence appeared to arise a project which was always dear
to him, of the civilization of Africa, — a dream which for ever
elevates his fame. In 1791, Mr. Wilberforce announced to
the House of Commons, — " We have aheady gained one vic-
tory : w^e have obtained for these poor creatures the recogni-
tion of their human nature, which, for a time, was most
shamefully denied them." It was the sarcasm of Montes-
quieu, " it would not do to suppose that negroes were men,
lest it should turn out that whites were not ;" for, the white
has, for ages, done what he could to keep the negro in that
hoggish state. His laws have been furies. It now appears,
that the negro race is, more than any other, susceptible of
rapid civilization. The emancipation is observed, in the
islands, to have wrought for the negro a benefit as sudden as
when a thermometer is brought out of the shade into the sun.
It has given him eyes and ears. If, before, he was taxed with
such stupidity, or such defective vision, that he could not set
a table square to the walls of an apartment, he is now the
principal, if not the only mechanic, in the West Indies ; and
is, besides, an architect, a physician, a lawyer, a magistrate,
an editor, and a valued and increasing political power. The
recent testimonies of Slurge, of Thome and Kimball, of Gur-
ney, of Philippo, are very explicit on this point, the capacity
and the success of the coloured and the black population in
employments of skill, of profit, and of trust ; and, best of all,
is the testimony to their moderation. They receive hints
and advances from the whites, that they will be gladly re-
ceived as subscribers to the Exchange, as members of this or
that committee of trust. They hold back, and say to each
other, that " social position is not to be gained by pushing."

I have said that this event interests us because it came
mainly from the concession of the whiles ; I add, that in part
it is the earning of the blacks. They won the pity and respect
which they have received, by their powers and native endow-
ments. I think this a circumstance of the highest import.

50 ON Mi:GUO EMANClPAT10x\

Tlieir whole fulore is in it. Oor planet, before the age of
written history, had its races of savages, like the generations of
sour paste, or the animalcules that wriggle and bite in a drop
of putrid water. Who cares for these or for their wars ? We
do not wish a world of bugs or of birds ! neither afterwards
of Scythians, Caribs, or Feejees. The grand style of nature,
her great periods, is all we observe in them. Who cares for
oppressing whites, or oppressed blacks, twenty centuries ago,
more than for bad dreams? Eaters and food are in the har-
mony of nature ; and there too is the germ for ever protected,
unfolding gigantic leaf after leaf, a newer flower, a richer fruit,
in every period, yet its next product is never to be guessed.
It will only save what is worth saving ; and it saves not by
compassion, but by power. It appoints no police to guard the
lion, but his teeth and clav^s ; no fort or city for the bird, but
his wings ; no rescue for ilies and mites, but tlieir spawning
numbers, which no ravages can overcome. It deals with men
after the same manner. If they are rude and foolish, down
they must go. When at last in a race, a new principle
appears, an idea, — that conserves it ; ideas only save races.
If the black man is feeble, and not important to the existing
races, not on a parity with the best race, the black man must
serve, and be exterminated. But if the black man carries in
his bosom an indispensable element of a new and coming
civilization, for the sake of that element, no wrong, nor
strength nor circumstance, can hurt him : he will survive and
play his part. So now, the arrival in the world of such men
as Toussaint, and the Haytian heroes, or of the leaders of their
race in Barbadoes and Jamaica, outweighs in good omen all
the English and American humanity. The anti-slavery of the
whole world, is dust in the balance before this, — is a poor
squeamishness and nervousness : the might and the right are
here : here is the anti-slave : here is man : and if you have
man, black or while is an insignificance. The intellect — that
is miraculous ! Who has it, has the talisman i his skin and

1> THE HiUTISH WEST INDIES. 5t

bones, though ihey were of ihe color of night, are transparent,
and the everlasting stars shine through, with attractive beams.
But a compassion for that which is not, and cannot be useful
or lovely, is degrading and futile. All the songs, and news-
papers, and money-subscriptions, and vituperation of such as
do not think with us, will avail nothing against a fact. I say
to you, yon must save yourself, black or white, man or woman ;
other help is none. I esteem the occasion of this jubilee to
be the proud discovery, that the black race can contend with
the white ; that, in the great anthem which we call history, a
piece of many parts and vast compass, after playing a long
time a very low and subdued accompaniment, they perceive
the time arrived when they can strike in with effect, and take
a master's part in the music. The civilization of the world has
reached that pitch, that their moral genius is becoming indis-
pensable, and the quality of the race is to be honoured for
itself. For this, they have been preserved in sandy deserts,
in rice- swamps, in kitchens and shoe-shops, so long: now let
them emerge, clothed and in their own form.

There remains the very elevated consideration which the
subject opens, but which belongs to more abstract views than
we are now taking ; this, namely, that the civilization of no race
can be perfect whilst another race is degraded. It is a doc-
trine alike of the oldest, and of the newest philosophy, that
man is one, and that you cannot injure any member, without a
sympathetic injury to all the members. America is not civi--
lized whilst Africa i& barbarous.

These considerations seem to leave no choice for the action
of the intellect and the conscience of the country. There have
been moments in this, as well as in every piece of moral his-
tory, when there seemed room for the infusions of a sceptical
philosophy ; when it seemed doubtful, whether brute force
would not triumph in the eternal struggle. I doubt not, that
sometimes a despairing negro when jumping over the ship's
sides to escape from the white devils who surrounded him,

32 ON NEGRO EMANCIPATION, ETC.

has believed there was no vindication of right ; it is hor-
rible to think of, but it seemed so. I doubt not but
sometimes the negro's friend, in the face of scornful and brutal
hundreds of traders and drivers, has felt his heart sink. Es-
pecially, it seems to me, some degree of despondency is par-
donable, when he observes the men of conscience and of
intellect, his own natural allies and champions, — those whose
attention should be nailed to the grand objects of this cause,
so hotly offended by whatever incidental petulances or infirmi-
ties of indiscreet defenders of the negro, as to permit them-
selves to be ranged with the enemies of the human race ; and
names which should be the alarums of liberty and the watch-
words of truth, are mixed up with all the rotten rabble of
selfishness and tyranny. I assure myself that this coldness
and blindness will pass away. A single noble wind of senti-
ment will scatter them for ever. I am sure that the good and
wise elders, the ardent and generous youth will not permit
what is incidental and exceptional to withdraw their devotion
from the essential and permanent characters of the question.
There have been moments, I said, when men might have been
forgiven who doubted. Those moments are past. Seen in
masses, it cannot be disputed, there is progress in human
society. There is a blessed necessity by which the interest of
men is always driving them to the right ; and, again, making
all crime mean and ugly. The genius of the Saxon race is
friendly to liberty ; the enterprise, the very muscular vigour
of this nation, are inconsistent with slavery. The Intellect,
with blazing eye, looking through History from the beginning
onward, gazes on this blot, and it disappears. The sentiment
of right, once very low and indistinct, but ever more articu-
late, because it is the voice of the universe, pronounces Free-
dom. The Power that built this fabric of things affirms it in
the heart ; and in the history of the 1st of August, has made
a sign to the ages, of his will.

I

§

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